


Necessities of Life

by Ilthit



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Apocalypse, Finland (Country), Gen, Plothole Fill, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-01 13:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18800989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: Year 0, Day 3. Someone made a mistake with the booking.





	1. The Essentials

**Author's Note:**

> Written from the point of view of just having finished Book One, so apologies if the survival of ancient Finnish gods and metre was already explained some other way later in the series.

_Year 0, Day 3_  
  
“We’re not leaving. The travel agency said the island would be ours all week.”  
  
“Well, neither are we! We had these cabins booked since August!”  
  
Satu Sorsa of the Kalevala Society didn’t stamp her foot. She didn’t cross her arms. She had raised her voice, and that was quite enough. She did shiver, though you might put that down to the abominable weather, and shake her head. “He must have thought we were all one group. I can’t imagine why.” Now she thought back, the fellow had made references that had seemed strange at the time, but dismissible: to more people than she had enrolled for the fall retreat, the bed count, and to a ‘group coming on the first ferry’. He had even called the Society ‘you Pagan people’, which was just manifestly incorrect. She lifted her chin at the man across from her, who probably was Pagan, judging by the beard. “I guess then... we will be sharing.”  
  
Ville Vesivirta looked around to his fellow members of Taivaannaula, a society for preserving and recreating folk traditions. “Everybody all right with that?”  
  
There were some mutterings at first, but then there were smiles and extended hands, and eventually laughter as the two groups gratefully piled into the dry, warm main room of the largest of the three buildings on the rocky little Saimaa island. They’d brought enough sausages and beer for everyone. Well, sausages, anyway.  
  
  
_Year 0, Day 4_  
  
“That’s based entirely on conjecture.”  
  
“Conjecture is better than outright invention. Ilmatar?”  
  
“We cannot keep coming back to that. A nineteenth century scholar would not have had the same devotion to accuracy we treasure today in research into cultural history. He had a different goal in mind when he began compiling the Kalevala.”  
  
“To create a Finnish national epic, I know, but the point--”  
  
“Ilmatar is part of our literary tradition now. Lönnrot’s work has its own value…”  
  
“The point is that it muddies what we know and believe about actual traditional poems, songs and beliefs. For me, the Kalevala is both an invaluable resource and a distortion we have to put into perspective.”  
  
“I don’t disagree, but--”  
  
“Hey! Guys! It works! Come and see.”  
  
The conversation was dropped as everyone rushed up to the television. The wind tore at the antenna on the cabin’s roof.  
  
  
  
_Year 0, Day 10_  
  
Ville watched his bobber float up and down on a rolling wave, trying to reconcile the familiarity of the scene and the action to the fact that nothing would ever be the same again. He mustn’t think about that too much, about the crackling television and the channels that suddenly just weren’t there anymore. Not now. Though he knew on some level his head would never be quiet again, right now he had to wait and watch. Watch for the bobber to sink, wait for the tug of the line.  
  
There was a tingle at the back and top of his head, like an expectation of a vision. He sat and waited to see what would happen as his eyes stayed glued on the bobber, but the epiphany he expected stayed silent, merely humming at the back of his skull like an oncoming train. Insistence without context.  
  
It came to him that he had never in his life wanted a fish as much as he did now. He had never really _needed_ to fish before. He sat here, the weight of his hungry ancestry upon his shoulders, the starvation of generations written into his genetic code, waiting. His lips fell open as of their own accord. “ _Anna Ahti ahvenia, Pekka pieniä kaloja_...” If he caught something small and nimble, perches or even roaches, he could fix that fish trap and use them as bait, or at the very least they could make soup. His voice rose in confidence. “ _Suutari suuria, räätäli raskaita ja veikko veneen pitusia!_ ”  
  
The bobber shivered, rotated, and dipped below the surface.  
  
  
  
_Year 0, Day 12_  
  
Ville knocked on the door of the sauna’s dressing room. “Satu, come on.”  
  
“Yes, yes,” came the muffled reply.  
  
“It’s eleven thirty.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So get your butt out of there. I’ll explain later.”  
  
After midnight, it would be the elf’s turn. The spirit of this place, the island that was keeping them safe while death—and worse—stalked the mainland shores. That mattered again now. He knew that to the very bottom of his soul. Never bathe in the sauna after midnight. “Put in another log before you leave. It will dry out faster.”  
  
“I know how to use a sauna, you infuriating man!”  
  
He was sure she did, but it seemed a less crazy reason than to leave the elf a hotter sauna.  
  
  
  
_Year 0, Day 20_  
  
The people on the island looked over at the people on the motor boat, and both sets came to the same conclusion. You just couldn’t be sure.  
  
“There’s another cabin island just over there,” said Otso Alatalo, pointing in the direction of the sunrise.  
  
“Are you lying?” said a woman on the boat.  
  
“No, I swear. I saw it on the map.”  
  
A flurry of activity. Someone was sent up to the main cabin to find one of the maps provided by the holiday agency.  
  
“Come back in spring!” Satu called after the boat as it slipped off.  
  
In the spring the ice would be gone and they could once again shout at each other over the water instead of risking awkward proximity, as they would if either party just walked or skied across the ice in the coming months. Ville studied the shoreline and wondered how much effort it would take break a ten metre ring of ice around the shore, to drown anything coming across, and whether it would be worth the difficulty it would make every time the party wanted to go ice-fishing. Could the pier work as a bridge? A bridge could be defended.  
  
Their neighbours would have to be rowing, if they did come back in the spring. If none of them had the illness. He couldn’t imagine they would still have petrol left.  
  
They’d have run out of a lot of things by then. Meat. Electricity. Maybe even timber. No, not that that. He glanced back at the crop of trees on the island, spruce and pine, even a couple of birches. Plenty of timber for this winter, at least.  
  
There would not be a lot of anything else.  
  
But the stories. They’d brought books, and knowing Otso there would be notebooks and pens, too. If they survived, so would the stories.

 


	2. In the Absence of Priests, Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Didn't mean to write another one about these guys, but here we are.

_Year 2_

“So you can’t—can’t you see them?” Ville pointed a finger across the ice, beyond the crushed water circle of protection around their island.

“There aren’t any beasts on the ice,” said Otso. The lights of the cabins were far behind them, this close to the shoreline, and the snow shining in the moonlight on this clear night showed a clear field all the way to the next islands.

Ville shook his head. “Not beasts.”

They hovered in the shadows of the next island, darker yet against the dark, and moved like black laundry hung up to dry, with limbs stretching out towards them.

“That’s where that other settlement...” He pursed his lips tight and shook his head, took his eyes away from the island. “You are right. There are no beasts on the ice. Let’s go around one more time.”

-

Ville felt the ice with his boot. It sank, inclining towards the shore, but it would hold, he knew. They’d been out here for ice-fishing before and the weather had only gotten colder since then. He held on to the end of the pier and hopped carefully on to the ice. The snow-shoes, woven by Kirsi earlier that month, would help spread his weight.

The day had broken as clear as the previous night had fallen and he squinted against the double glare of the sun and the snow. It was only a short trek. He had his knife and his rifle, and he only intended to have a look. Someone ought to, anyway. If there were beasts or monsters on their neighbouring island, they should mount an expedition and finish them off before they ever got near their pier.

It wasn’t as large as their island, barely more than a rock sticking out of the lake, crowded with pine and spruce. As he trod onwards, he considered whether ditching the shoes would mean he could run faster in the snow. But no—if he’d intended to escape, he should have brought skis.

He found it facing his own island, spindly elongated arms hanging towards his people’s home. His anger flashed before even fear could, and he raised his rifle, only to notice the thing was quite dead.

Quite dead, and once human. This wasn’t a moose, a dog, or a rabbit. Mutated and hideous, but he could still see scraps of bright blue fabric sticking to its blackened skin.

I THINK I ATE THEM

Ville swung his rifle around. A tattered figure fluttered in between the trees, its face a staring skull, eyes blank and liquid. His eyes followed it to its feet, which snaked backwards into something darker and heavier. Something slow-moving.

PLEASE HELP ME

“I… I don’t know how. Our Father who art in Heaven...”

THERE IS NO GOD

THERE IS NO REST

COME CLOSER

Running in snow-shoes was an arduous and undignified process. After a dozen or so steps, Ville turned back, but nothing had followed him.

PLEASE COME BACK

Whatever it was, it was stuck in the shadows. He turned his eyes back towards his people.

COME BACK

It tugged at the back of his head, fresh and urgent. He shoved it out of his head and held on to the truth.

His people needed to know what was out here.

He and Otso, Marja and Teuvo would come back out here on skis, with enough fire and anger to burn out whatever was out there.

And then, by the grace of whatever God would answer him, he would send that spirit where it belonged.

He remembered the face of the woman on the boat. Tired, resolute. The smattering of moles along her upper lip. The blue of her winter coat. She deserved as much.


End file.
